Passion of J. Robert Oppenheimer, The

Technically a mostly very fine edit with only a few noticeable cuts that you can't blame an editor too much for considering how tightly-woven the source material being worked with here is. Narratively I think this is both easier to follow in some senses, especially for viewers with less of a firm grasp on the original cut of the film, but also the omitting of some scenes makes certain characters feel out of place, sometimes highlighting these issues from the original film even more. The name cards felt very fitting however and I don't wanna harp on this 'confusion' too much as it's clearly not a dealbreaker for most. I also just apparently don't have the same fundamental issues with the film as the creator of this edit does, which is no fault of anyone's and simply means that, of course, this edit isn't really for me. That said, the Strauss reveal of the third act does indeed come swinging like a "wrecking ball" and is a very fun sequence as presented here. Interesting credits song choice as well! As far as delivering on the promises from its description, I'd say this is on-the-whole a successful effort.

Gibichung's edit of "Oppenheimer" offers a refreshing take on Christopher Nolan's flawed film, enhancing the viewing experience in several key ways.

First and foremost, the decision to present the movie in 4K full-screen 16:9 format is a stroke of brilliance. While this choice may crop the frame, all home video versions of this movie are cropped in some way, at least the IMAX footage. I like how the entire movie fills the frame. It is crisp and detailed. This is a much better way of viewing it at home. It keeps the style and tone of the director while improving the storytelling. The addition of the on-screen titles that tell you who these famous figures are was an interesting choice and it makes sense. Nolan’s film sprints through the introductions of a small army of famous scientists without making their names memorable. It improves on his style choices by going all in with the black and white vs color time jumps. It is clearer now when we are in the present of the 1950s or the past of the 1930s-40s. He avoided showing RDJ too soon in the film so we can live in the 1940s longer and it separates the timelines in a cleaner more logical manner. He did the same thing I did in my edit of “Oppenheimer” by making the story more linear. I just stopped in 1945. It would have just been so much better if Nolan had shot the entire movie in color. He even had Kodak create a from-scratch black and white 65mm film stock as well as a new process to develop it. Such a waste of time and resources. Black and white and IMAX don’t go together but I think that Nolan is just grasping at things that can make his films different.

Gibichung eventually switches back to color at the end of the movie and removes Stauss’ boring black-and-white Senate confirmation hearings. The edit has one of the same problems that the original has, although it greatly minimizes it, and that is: after Trinity, the movie starts to slow down to a crawl. The black and white does not help. Yet I preferred watching it like this over the constant cross-cutting Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame did in the theatrical cut.

I really can’t get over how good a decision it was to crop in on the frame to make the whole film 16:9. It is a nice median between the square IMAX frame and the anamorphic widescreen. Nolan’s film has FOUR different aspect ratios 2:20:1, 1:43:1, 1:90:1, and 1:78:1. For my edit I went with the widescreen format of 2:20:1 and Gibichung went with the full frame 16:9 which I wish I had thought of. If you watch interviews with the cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema he says that he had to compose every shot in the movie directly in the center. The reason he did this is because of the square IMAX format that some of the footage was shot in. Anything not in the center can only be seen with peripheral vision in an IMAX theater. Every shot framed the same way = boring. Nolan is limiting himself by visually appealing only to a small demographic of people who will see the movie, the IMAX audience. There are only 19 IMAX theaters in the United States. The closest one to me is over an hour away. He expects people to drive for multiple hours to experience his “vision.” It would be much more efficient to play to the home video or standard anamorphic theatergoer. Nolan is a bit of a Luddite in that he rejects the digital home theater experience. But a boring movie is a boring movie no matter how it’s viewed. Watching it at home on a 1080 projector with 5.1 just isn’t that much different than watching it on a massive film reel in an IMAX theater. The movie is still the movie.

I also really liked the poster for this cut. When I first saw it, it reminded me of "The Passion of Joan of Arc" before I even read that it was intentional. Nicely done!

After seeing this only once in theaters, I thought it would be interesting to see what it would be like to watch an edit with a relatively vague memory of every scene and line.

From the start, this edit definitely made things easier to follow. My complaint on the original was not only I had to keep up with the fast edits and intelligent lingo they were saying all the time, but I also had to remember what timeline it was and who was who.

I really didn’t miss Strauss as much as I thought I would during any of the pre bomb scenes. It made things much easier to digest. He also still has reasons to mess with Oppenheimer. It made sense. I do wonder how much those Strauss scenes helped with extra layers of characterization for Oppenheimer throughout, though. Perhaps I’ll watch the original once more as my memory is foggy.

The names also helped, and were not cheesy in any way. They gave me some aha moments realizing who they actually were.

The sound, video and quality of cuts were phenomenal. I loved the aspect ratio changes, and the change of black and white scenes. It made perfect sense to me.

All in all, I loved it. The pacing was much better, not as drawn out, and easier to understand.

I am keeping this edit as my go to for the future, for sure!

What Gibichung does to this edit is what Cillian, Josh, Benny, Casey, Bob and Jason did in this movie - salvaging the best of what they're provided with their lifelike performances to an otherwise phony, artificial and naive source material. Nolan should've made a limited series instead of this cowardly halfhearted sellout of a 'big-screen crap.
Now, to Gibichung's The Passion of J. Robert Oppenheimer - I'll say it's much better than the original in terms of runtime, focus and acts structure. Good work.